“What’s-his-name” was the ex-Honourable Walter P. Moffat, former Member of Parliament for Vancouver Centre, the riding that encompassed downtown Vancouver and Granville Island. Wally the One-Term Wonder, as the media had dubbed him after he’d been roundly trounced in the most recent exercise in democratic futility, was a pal of Mary-Alice, my sister and our new junior partner, and her husband, Dr. David Paul. Moffat had contacted us through Mary-Alice about producing a catalogue of his art collection, which he evidently intended to send on tour to raise money for his wife’s charitable foundation, something to do with children. However, first thing that morning a man named Woody Getz, who’d said he was Mr. Moffat’s manager, had called to say that something had come up and Mr. Moffat couldn’t make it.
“How lucky for you,” Bobbi said again, when I told her.
“Yes, indeed.” She smiled. “Here, deposit this someplace safe,” I said, and handed her the cash Ms. Waverley had given me.
Cradling Bodger, she lifted her backside off the sofa and straight-armed the money into a front pocket of her jeans. Safe enough, I supposed. I certainly wouldn’t have tried to take it away from her. While Bobbi wasn’t what you’d call strapping — strapping implied, to me at least, a certain amount of, well, upper-body development and Bobbi was, truth be told, almost as flat as a boy — years of schlepping heavy photographic equipment around had made her as strong as many a man her size, stronger than some. Moreover, she had recently begun to study some form of martial art.
“Moffat hasn’t changed his mind about the catalogue, has he?” she asked worriedly.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope not.” Neither of us had any idea what type of art Mr. Moffat collected — it could be dryer lint and chewing gum collages for all we cared — but business was a bit slow and we needed the work. “His manager just said he couldn’t make it tonight, nothing about rescheduling.”
The phone on my desk warbled. I pressed the speakerphone button. “Tom McCall,” I said, just to be reassuring.
“Tell me it isn’t so,” my sister Mary-Alice said.
“Okay,” I said. “It isn’t so.”
I could hear car horns in the background. She was calling on her cellphone, likely stuck in traffic on the Lions Gate Bridge. She normally didn’t come in until after the worst of the morning rush hour was over, and usually left before the worst began. The unseasonable fog had thrown rush hour off schedule, I supposed, without much sympathy.
“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” Mary-Alice said, in her best schoolmarm voice.
“That’s right.” I assumed she was referring to the cancellation of the appointment with the ex-Honourable Walter P. Moffat. “But whatever it is, it isn’t my fault.”
An exasperated sigh hissed from the phone speaker. “I just got off the phone with Jeanie Stone.” Jeanie Stone was vice president of the British Columbia Association of Female Forestry Workers, the BCAFFW, for short.
“Oh-oh,” Bobbi said under her breath.
“Tell me you didn’t let her talk you into doing a nude calendar,” Mary-Alice said.
“Okay. I didn’t let her talk me into doing a nude calendar.”
“Well, she seems to think she did,” Mary-Alice said.
“Actually,” I said, “she didn’t have to.” Bobbi groaned. I glared at her across the desk. “Anyway, they won’t be nude,” I said. “Not really. It’s just pin-up girl stuff. With axes and chainsaws and logging machinery covering the important bits.”
There was a momentary and very pregnant silence, followed by, “Oh, for god’s sake, Tom.”
“Look, Mary-Alice. I know it’s lame, but —”
“Lame? It’s bloody crippled. Ever since those damned women in England started it, it’s been done to death by everyone from senior ladies’ knitting circles to female hockey players.”
“Relax, Mary-Alice,” I said. “It’s for a good cause, remember.”
All proceeds from sales of the calendar were going to the Stanley Park restoration fund; on December 15, 2006, the one-thousand-acre, densely forested park had been savaged by a freak windstorm that had destroyed as many as ten thousand trees, leaving gaping wounds that would take decades to heal.
“Anyway,” I added, “Jeanie’s the client, isn’t she? If she and the other members of her association want to do a pin-up calendar, who are we to argue?” Before Mary-Alice could reply, the phone bleeped, indicating another call. “Hang on, M-A.” I pressed the flash button before Mary-Alice could object. “Tom McCall,” I said.
“Tom,” another female voice said. “It’s Jeanie Stone.”
“Hi, Jeanie,” I said.
“Tom, you guys want this job or not?” She was also calling on a cellphone, maybe from the middle of the woods, if the poor quality of the connection was any indication.
“Oh-oh,” Bobbi said again, even more under her breath.
“Yes, Jeanie,” I said. “We want the job.”
“Then maybe you could get your sister off my case.”
“She’s just thinking about what’s best for your organization’s image, Jeanie,” I said.
“What she thinks is best,” Jeanie said. “Look, I get that she doesn’t like our idea for the calendar, and maybe she’s right that it isn’t all that original, but it’s our damned calendar, Tom. If we wanna do it in our skivvies, we’ll bloody well do it in our skivvies. Or stark effing naked, for that matter. You guys aren’t the only photographers in town, you know.”
“I know, Jeanie, but —”
“Tom, I gotta go,” Jeanie interrupted. “I’ll come by the studio about seven, seven-thirty this evening. We’ll work it out over a beer or two.” The line went dead.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bobbi said. “She won’t fire us. She likes you.”
“She does?”
“God knows why.” She pointed a finger at the phone. “Mary-Alice.”
I pressed the flash button to switch back to Mary-Alice’s call. “M-A? You still there?”
“Where the hell else would I be? The traffic hasn’t moved a goddamned inch since you put me on hold. This fucking fog. Whoever heard of fog in June?” I heard the bleat of her little Beamer’s horn. Mary-Alice wasn’t the most impatient person on the lower mainland, but she was a close third. “Who were you talking to? Jeanie, right? God, men,” she added disgustedly. “You just want to see her naked, don’t you?” She then became the second person inside of a minute to hang up on me without letting me get a word in.
My fancy ergonomic chair wobbled and creaked as I slumped back with a sigh. The chair had been a parting gift from my co-workers at the Vancouver Sun when I’d left almost ten years before to start my own business, and it was showing its age. I knew how it felt, if I may be permitted to anthropomorphize.
“Do you want to see Jeanie naked?” Bobbi asked.
“What? No, of course not.”
“Why not? She’s very attractive. For a lumberjack.”
“She’s not a lumberjack.”
“Lumberjill, then.”
“She’s a ‘forestry worker.’ She drives some kind of big machine that bites trees off at the roots.” Bobbi was right, though: Jeanie was attractive, very much so, in a fierce and brawny kind of way, and I thought she’d make a very interesting study in black and white, clothed or not.